Andre Norton | Criticism

[Andre Norton] acknowledges that she has used the war game Dungeons and Dragons as the context for [Quag Keep]. Seven wayfarers, haunted by the memory of another world, are bound by a "geas"—an uncanny compulsion to seek out an alien force which menaces the precarious balance between Law and Chaos in their own world. The travelers wear bracelets of dice which warn them of new skirmishes with the agents of Chaos. When the companions arrive at Quag Keep, stronghold of the summoning power, they recognize the source of the spell: "[Y]ou aren't real, don't you understand that? I'm the game master." Chance is double-edged, however, and the Seven exert their own power over him. The landscape and its creatures—including some familiar inhabitants of Tolkien's Middle Earth—are cleverly devised and integrated. Skillful exposition in the first two chapters hints at previous incarnation for the Seven...